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Casual gaming site? / THU 8-13-26 / "Gold" of the 21st century / Query for Claude, e.g. / Verbalized shivers / A.I. that has been trained with massive amounts of text, in brief / Cough drop brand whose name is yodeled in its commercials / Epitome of a hot place / Kind of bean used in Egyptian falafel
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Constructor: Killian Olson
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
 |
| [35A: "Light" weapon] |
Theme answers:
- LOBSTERS (from "Mobsters") (17A: Mafia members, e.g.) (M to L)
- ESPOUSES (from "Ex-spouses") (26A: Alimony recipients, say) (XS to S)
- AXLES (from "Ales") (41A: Drinks at a pub) (L to XL)
- AQUARIUM (from "Aquarius") (53A: 11th of a noted 12) (S to M)
A large language model (LLM) is an AI model (typically a neural network) trained on a vast amount of text for natural language processing tasks, especially language generation. LLMs can typically generate, summarize, translate, and analyze text in many contexts, and are a foundational technology behind modern chatbots. Biased or inaccurate training data can make an LLM's output less reliable.LLMs are typically based on transformer architecture. Generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) are a type of LLM that is pre-trained to predict the next word. GPTs are then often fine-tuned to follow instructions and to behave as assistants.
Benchmark evaluations for LLMs attempt to measure model reasoning, factual accuracy, alignment, and safety. (wikipedia)
• • •
Back to the theme—it was tricky for many reasons. The answers are "wrong" for their clues, so you have to figure out why, great, this happens not infrequently on Thursdays. But today, even after I saw the "gimmick" (LOBSTERS is obv. a one-letter change of MOBSTERS), I did not see it at all. This is because that letter change in LOBSTERS/MOBSTERS involves consecutive letters, so I figured we were just dropping the letter down one place in the alphabet. That is, I didn't see Medium changed to Large, I saw the letter "M" dropped back one space in the alphabet to the letter "L." Things didn't exactly get clearer with the other themers. I got AXLES and wondered why we were now adding a letter instead of changing a letter. The puzzle now seemed to have two different conceits. What the hell? And ESPOUSES also looked like an add-a-letter situation, since I thought the base answer was just "spouses" (26A: Alimony recipients, say). Even after I got SIZING UP and figured out why most of the changes were happening, I was stuck on ESPOUSES. I still thought we were changing "spouses," so "S" appeared to have been changed to "ES," and I was like "ES!?!?! That is not how you write "extra small" ... also ... wait, Small to Extra Small would be sizing down, not sizing up ..." Finally dawned on me that the base answer was EX-SPOUSES, not just "spouses." Let's just say XS is not a size I think about often, and definitely not in the standard size range (SML + XL). So even though the themers were easy enough to get, completely grasping the theme took some time.
Bullets:
- 8A: One who's definitely not being invited to the party (PARIAH) — another example of cluing being "????" Like, I wanted there to be wordplay, like maybe "party" was being used in a political way, something like that. But instead it's just ... literal. Yeah, I guess you would not invite a social outcast to your party. "Hey, you know who we're definitely not inviting to this party? Hitler." The answer seems too extreme or contextually wrong for the clue. Looked at another way, there's something sort of snotty and snobby and mean-girls (or boys) exclusionary about the way this clue is phrased. Clue could be shorter and clearer and better.
- 25D: "Gold" of the 21st century (DATA) — ugh, shut up. The big tech boosterism here is barfsome.
- 49A: Collect over and over, as resources in a video game (FARM) — we get it, you're on the computer a lot, yeesh. Give it a rest.
- 55D: Allow to post on a forum again, e.g. (UNBAN) — they finally UNBANned me from QUORA after I agreed to stop answering user questions with Yeti conspiracy theories (54D: Website that describes itself as "a place to share knowledge and better understand the world").
- 8D: Query for Claude, e.g. (PROMPT) — in the future, there will be no writers. Just PROMPTers. (In case you've been living under a rock, the "Claude" here is one of the better known LLMs (or "series of LLMs," per wikipedia).
- 44A: ___ Ingebrigtsen, track gold medalist at the 2020 and 2024 Olympics (JAKOB) — come on, if you're gonna throw some obscure Olympian name at me, at least tell me what he got his medals for. "Track" doesn't cut it (he won the 1500 meters in 2020 and the 5000 meters in 2024)
- 39A: Verbalized shivers (BRRS) — has never and will never be a thing. The stupidest plural I've ever seen in my life. And it turns out this is, in fact, the first time I'm seeing it in my life: its last appearance in the NYTXW was 1967. They were much more desperate for fill back then. Something about the Cold War ... rationing ... I forget, but clearly times were bad.
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109 comments:
Medium-Challenging. A slog. Hated it.
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
My 1D zero was ZIppo before it was ZILCH.
AIR buDS before PODS at 9D.
When I fly off the handle, I GO Bananas before I GO BonkERs before I GO BERSERK (3D).
I guessed JAson Ingebrigtsen before JAKOB at 44A.
My 65D pioneering channel was tNN before it was CNN.
WOEs:
SOFA as a casual gaming site at 40D (I get it now).
The aforementioned JAKOB Ingebrigtsen (44A).
ROMAN Roy at 61A, or any Succession-based clue. Didn't watch the show.
Honestly never realized what the theme was doing: the crosses took care of everything, and I didn't even notice the SIZING UP.
Caught onto the trick with LOBSTERS/MOBSTERS, but put the size letters into rebuses to allow for EXSPOUSES, not thinking of "xs" as "extra small." Typical Thursday blunder.
Solved it without understanding how “espouses” worked. Thank you.
No idea. EX-SPOUSES had me putting XS in as a rebus square. The next theme I got was the revealer, so I figured we'd be going up a size in each subsequent themer, although I wasn't sure how that would happen since the next sizes are all single letters. But then I put in ML for the ZILCH/MOBSTER crossing, figuring maybe I hadn't heard of a medium-large. It took me far too long to really understand the theme (AQUARIUM/s did it for me), but I found it more on the medium to challenging side because I started with a small size. Oy.
Two notes of note:
• This puzzle is a pangram.
• All sizes that can result from a “sizing up” are represented in the theme answers: S-M-L-XL.
Wonky theme - it works I guess but doesn’t kill. Had it with MOBSTERS right off the bat. Revealer is neat and apt.
American AQUARIUM
Rex summarizes the mixed fill nicely. I like BANDWAGON and GO BESERK. BARRAGE works but beyond that it’s pretty flat. The product placement is evident all throughout the grid.
All This USELESS Beauty
Pleasant enough Thursday morning solve.
Kurious ORANj
I believe the “casual gaming” hint is in opposition to “competitive gaming” which is typically done on desktop. Rather than formal
Rex nails it. Clever enough theme, unpleasant fill, awkward clueing. I’ve never encountered XS for “extra small,” so put me in the camp of folks who tripped up on that one.
For us Vermonters, there is nothing especially wintry about snow, since we also get it in spring and fall. “We get three seasons of BRRS,” said no one ever.
It’s hard to imagine a more flat-footed clue for SPEND than [pass, as time doing something].
I never got the sizing deal but solved it in 13 minutes well below my Thursday average. How can that not be easy or very easy?
Yeesh. This was really hard for me, mostly due to a lot of stuff I'm not familiar with:
JAKOB Ingebrigtsen
ROMAN Roy
QUORA
LLM
PROMPT as clued
AIRPODS
Sometimes you just live in a different world from the constructor.
Hey All !
Thanks to everyone for the Birthday wishes YesterComments!
Never did figure out the Theme on this one. Apparently the ole brain saw SIZING UP and thought of assessing a situation, and not literal SIZes. Silly brain.
Kind of a wacky Theme. Was looking for a Rebus first, but every answer was going in regularly, so abandoned that notion.
Never heard of an LLM. Wait, is it Life Like Model? How about Living Lies, Man. Not up on my AI, I do know it'll take over the world eventually, we'll all be controlled by the Big Computer in the Sky. It'll answer questions obtusely, like 42, e.g.
Uniclue:
Your tios derelict kid
USELESS NINO
Welp, hope y'all have a great Thursday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Deifinitely living under a rock because no idea what Claude is (yes i looked it up so now i get it). I usually love Thursdays but this one was also too AI etc. friendly for me
Anybody else out there slap in BLT before PBJ?
Well, the slippery cluing and slippery theme kept my brain involved and happy.
Slippery clues such as [They might have deposits] – what kind of deposits? The kind in banks? Deltas? Large purchases?
A slippery theme that kept me guessing as to what was going on until I filled in the revealer. Oh I tried getting it before that, but nada, ZILCH. That is what I hope for in a Thursday puzzle – a capital-R Riddle.
In my post-solve musing, thinking about sizes, it hit me that “petite” is embedded in the word “appetite”, and then I learned that “petite” is a category of sizes rather than a size itself and that there is even a "petite large" size. Hah! That brought the phrase "jumbo shrimp" to mind, and well, I can’t tell you how much my brain savors little diversions like this...
So, Killian, you gave me a Thursday-worthy outing, topped with some delightful digression, and I’m pleased as punch. Thank you for this!
zero stars for me, for small reasons( why is a PBJ crunchy? Hated BRRS almost as much as I hated LLM and its several related clues) and for a big one: the sizing up trick works differently in the different locations. For example, you could have entered L/M as a rebus for ZILCH/LOBSTERS, but not in PASTE/ESPOUSES (you are only "using" the upsizing in the across), then for MAXIMUM/LLM/AXLES the across requires removing a letter, and at AQUARIUM/MASKS we're back to the rebus style of the first iteration of it. This might have been forgivable if there were some additional extra special oomph to the theme (we had XS/S followed by S/M then M/L then L/XL), or if the fill were the creme de la creme of fill, but as it was it all felt brutally sloppy to me. Hated it, would not do again.
Definitely first thought BLT but also love crunchy peanut butter.
Got the NE fairly quickly but drew a blank on PARIAH even after getting the AH and had only a smattering of fill in the rest of the puzzle. So had to look up PARIAH and then worked through the rest without fully understanding the theme, so thanks Rex! I tend to get involved in a lot of DIY projects and find consulting with AI’s very useful. However, it pays to pose questions in different ways and to challenge their answers when they seem inconsistent in order to pull out the best solutions.
I never figured out the theme, but filled in the grid OK (except I put in an ML rebus, which I had to fix to get the music). And what Rex said about the cluing. I didn't know the runner, and wanted torrent before BARRAGE, which would have ruled out JAKOB, so I looked him up.
BARRAGE can lead to a bar fight.
Can you name a large city in Brazil, Marvin? RIOTED.
Mother: Be careful how you dress for the dance tonight, dear.
Daughter: Don't worry, I'm wearing a MAXI,MUM.
As you know, our TANNED and ORANGE President was recently spirited off of Air Force One in a catering container for security purposes. But what hasn't been reported is that during the brief period he was in the container he wolfed down two pounds of corned beef and a large jar of potato salad. The whole operation was a ploy to get Trump to the food ahead of the press.
This. It's video gaming lingo, and crossing FARM with that cluing I... I get it, but even so it was a slog to figure it out at the time. But yes, "casual" video gaming generally implies the living room/sofa, versus someone with a dedicated gaming station like a PC. It's a VERY vague line.
Once again the theme escaped me. Am I really the only one? I’ve been doing the NYT crosswords on a daily basis for fifteen years now, and I still can only discern the themes about 10% of the time, especially on Thursdays.
It’s not like I wasn’t patient or didn’t go with the flow. Today I wandered around the grid filling in section after section and only had six empty squares before I threw in the towel. I really feel like I’m a PARIAH and just not invited to the party on Thursdays. I don’t know if it’s a character flaw or if fate is punishing me for some infraction against nature that I have long since suppressed. Oh well, we all have our burdens to bear.
Btw - the fact that, long ago, someone got away with placing the SHIFT key next to the SHIFT LOCK key on a keyboard is proof that there is no God.
I solved as a themeless in 15 minutes on a day when I needed to kill time, which is rare for me on a Thursday so I liked it - except for LLM.
As far as being banned & unbanned from Quora, Rex, some of the people who post on that site are repulsively obsessed with 'toilet etiquette' so you brought a touch of class to it. Welcome back :)
Rare morning where I liked the puzzle LESS than Rex did. The clues were horrendous and the double/triple dip on AI related answers was so sad to see. Boring. Next.
XS absolutely is part of the standard size range -- in women's sizing.
Thanks Rex for explaining the theme!!!! I finished.... assumed that letters were going "UP" in the grid, since taking out the X from AXLES makes ALES, and adding it to ESPOUSES makes EX SPOUSES. Then I thought maybe we moved the "S" from SIZINGUP to replace the M to make AQUARIUS? And that M bounced up to replace the L in LOBSTERS? Anyway, it was a mess (in my head) and I didn't recognize we were dealing with Small, Medium, Large, XS, XL, etc. 13 minutes so pretty easy for Thursday. Thanks for an interesting puzzle, Killian!
I wanted to but the P was already in place. Crunchy peanut butter? Just another lame answer in this AI slop puzzle.
Great write-up, Rex.
People say they're not familiar with XS as a size, but there's a whole Australian rock band INXS. They were recently in the news when one of them binge ate himself up to a Small and was banned from the band. When he asked how he could get UNBANned, they said his diet could USELESS PIE.
One of the computer-related answers that hasn't been pointed out is the automated bit of software that reminds you to do your crunches, the ABBOT. It's why you see so many swole monks these days, in case you've been wondering.
My dog must be really cold because he always comes home full of BRRS.
I thought the theme was great and not difficult to understand once you saw the revealer. Thanks, Killian Olson.
I just started a Games subscription for the crossword. Today's clues full of AI, Claude, Apple, etc., were such a turn-off. Yesterday was also off-putting to me with the Google theme. I lost interest and clicked on 'reveal'. In recent years I just do the Sunday puzzle, trudging to library on Mondays to make a copy. If these kind of clues continue, I will go back to that.
Didn’t care for this one. I agree with the commenters who called it a slog and really not particularly interesting. Even with the explanation it seems like a stretch to get the theme. What is LLM for AI that’s been trained in text?
Because everyone's different. My average Thursday time is 9:48, but it took me 15:31 to solve today (just not on my wavelength; a couple initial wrong answers that others already mentioned [ZIPPO, BLT]; also as with some others, I started rebusing in answers instead of putting in the next size up; etc.). Glad this one was easy for you, but it was the exact opposite for me!
The rants are fun and all but A) there are formal gaming sites... Gaming has arenas and other competitive venues where the winners are paid big money... B) air pods were indeed announced simultaneous to the elimination of the headphone jack
Yes, under a rock here too. Thought the answer might be something in French.
Crunchy peanut butter is a thing
Didn't get the theme until I came here; still solved it pretty easily. Absolute garbage fill.
Loved the theme. This was a rare case where the revealer actually helped!
I wish Rex would add a count of corporate trademarks to the Stars Wars tracker. With 7 in QUORA / ALEVE / RICOLA / AIRPODS / SONY / RCA / CNN, this one is probably above the recent average. But not much, sadly.
Did not care for this puzzle and it’s theme
Un lugar para compartir conocimientos y comprender mejor el mundo.
If you want to crash land a puzzle, make one theme entry in a nonsense puzzle different than the others and cross it with a three letter AI initialism. And put it dead center. And surround those two entries with a healthy amount of cringe-ification. It's been a while since I've seen such an obvious self-inflicted bad choice, so I kinda hope I can take the editorial team out for lunch and after we put in our orders I can ask, "So seriously, what could've y'all been thinking?"
Outside of that last excruciating moment, I was mostly being sad the up sizing wasn't a rebus --just other words with the wrong letter. But I did find the overall fill and level of cluing wildly wrongly awkward as 🦖 mentioned so it was challenging in are-you-kidding kind of way (not the good kind of way) and for me that's always fun.
EXSPOUSES requires you to imagine XS in one square, but then ALES puts the XL into two boxes. I don't care about consistency in puzzles, but this is plain ole yuck.
I love the PIE eaten before the Ides of March as one has literally nothing to do with the other.
I also love the phrase GO BERSERK, I just really want it spelled with a Z.
The actual description of QUORA is "link in Go-ogle searches you skip over if you're looking for knowledge."
Feels like Thoreau had a thing against ants. Maybe if you moved back into town you'd get along with nature better, Henry.
I've decided I'll be wearing ORANGE next time I go to a red carpet event just to prove this puzzle wrong. Go Broncos.
Gunkometer--
People: 3
Places: 1
Products: 7
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20 of 78 (26%)
Funny Factor: 2 😕
🔥 Ooh-la-la! 🔥 TANNED.
Uniclues:
1 New Englanders gave impassioned speeches on how to pronounce "Sorry, you ate my youths after they walked on your lawn."
2 Those who divorced a crier.
3 What I majored in in college.
4 Lazy Chihuahua boy.
1 LOBSTERS ORATED
2 HERALD EX-SPOUSES
3 BOTTLES BARRAGE
4 USELESS NIÑO
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Sound of a friend with benefits. BESTIE OOHS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Two enthusiastic thumbs down, for all the reasons Rex said, and also a bunch of other awkward, try-hard cluing that is technically fine but made me eyeroll: "Pass, as time doing something" for SPEND, "Decline cookies, say, with 'out'" for OPT (another tech clue, sigh), "Five stars on a scale, typically" for MAXIMUM, "Grape whose...etc." for ZIN. I think maybe I was already in a bad mood from PROMPT, and it made a lot of okay things feel disproportionately blah.
Exact same experience.
Yes but you would never speak of them in terms of “formal” and “informal” so I don’t really know what the “?” thinks it is doing. There’s no phrase or concept being punned on. Also think RP’s objection to the air pod thing had more to do with/ inelegant wording than straight-up inaccuracy.
I finished easily and quickly but didn't understand the gimmick. I like it when you can grasp the gimmick and then use it to help with the solve.
I agree. I like a rebus puzzle. This ain’t it. No🎈for me.
Rex's write-up...3 stars (EKEd out), despite a preponderance of negativity (deservedly so), is exactly how I see today's puzzle.
We really enjoyed the challenge, beating our average time by a mere two seconds. But the XXXL portion of tech-speak, tech-anything... enough already! Ruined what could have been a majestic Thursday theme.
And some bizarre cluing; we get snow when it's especially wintry? New Orleans maybe, but hardly a generic location.
Exactly as Rex stated for this one; every word.
Bro....you TEAR THE PUZZLE APART (rightfully so) ...but then give it three-stars?!?! Reread that review. That is a ONE-STAR review. You need to own your opinions.
As others have said, Rex absolutely nailed it. NAILED it. No fun.
Me too. I had PRO__T so I wrote in PROusT. I thought it was the name of a story he wrote.
I don't usually agree with Rex on much, but his antipathy for things AI is exactly how I feel. Whole thing is freakin' scary. It's going to get out of hand soon. Terminator, anyone?
Can I get one of those rocks?
Definitely
I went through almost the exact same journey Rex did in trying to figure out the theme: started with thinking "SIZING UP" meant changing the L in LOBSTERS to the next letter in the alphabet, then confused because ESPOUSES needed an extra letter, then even more confused when AXLES needed a letter taken away. It didn't help that the only X in the puzzle was the one in AXLES, so I was trying to figure out how to bring the X from AXLES to ESPOUSES.
"I want to see Claude and LLM in my puzzle about as much as I want to see anything related to Harry ****ing Potter."
I feel so seen in this moment.
Given that we’d ORATEd, come up with the name of ROMAN Roy, and recalled that PIE/pi day lands just before the Ides of March (plus visited Italia for MOBSTERS, AMORE, etc.), and something was happening with X/L/M, I thought there was some kind of Latin numeral gimmick, and it took me forever to sort it all out.
The "up sizing" is inconsistent, taking XL out of AXLES and replacing it with L is "down sizing", is it not? Also, I live in Pennsylvania Dutch country so XS is not a concept I'm aware of, in fact, S is a rarity.
Pie is eaten on Pi Day 3/14, the day before the Ides of March, and the day MIT announces admissions. It's a math thing.
I'm with Rex re: confusion about how the theme worked. It was the M to L exchange on LOBSTERS that led me to thinking we were SIZING UP a letter rather than a SIZe, which doesn't make all that much sense for the theme revealer but...
I had no idea on who Claude is or that LLM is a thing. I've never played a modern video game so FARM needed all crosses.
So many PT combos - crePT, promPT, dePTh, oPT.
Thanks, Killian Olson!
Not entirely true, Lewis. I've been in shops where there were pieces of clothing labeled XXL and even XXXl. Not to mention Petite.
Wow, set a time record for Thursday solve - I guess it helps I'm on the younger end, work in tech, and got lucky with a couple of the more obscure references (like Mr. Ingebretsen). Liked the theme, but understand the icky vibes, even as someone who uses Claude every day at work.
the "hey fellow computer users" of tuesday's puzzle to today's unpleasantness makes me almost (almost) long for colloquialisms and star wars references. i would welcome a pause on all tech clues/answers. as is my wont i avoided looking at the marquee clues which made for a simple if ugly solve. BRRS, ETDS, IOTAS, AXLES…i'll take plurals which only appear in crosswords, alex…er,
ken. why devote six words to clue EKE on a thursday? time to move on with my day…
AI makes billionaires out of millionaires, but I have yet to discover what it does for ordinary human beings...like us.
Like most, couldn't grasp the theme even with the revealer. Killian assumes we're more clever than we are! Nicely done, with enough easy clues to keep me moving along.
Lots of sour grapes in the comments today. Never heard of crunchy peanut butter? Airbuds? I do understand that Quora is more of a niche interest for us boomers.
Anyway, hope that all word lovers won't be ostriches with AI- it's here and useful , ignoring it won't make it go away. The future is concerning, yes , but all the more reason to stay interested.. The techies are going to rely on the literati to keep AI honest.
Gary Jugert's comments right below yours do pretty much this and more every day
Leaving the reveal line blank, I tried hard to understand the incorrect, missing, and extra letters. I wondered if we had a wandering letter theme, the X from EX-SPOUSES dropping down into ALES? And the missing M from MOBSTERS ending up at the end of AQUARIUM? A fruitless exercise, obviously. So, the reveal was an eye-opening delight. Great job on accounting for all the sizes between XS and XL! Otherwise, BANDWAGON, PARIAH, BARRAGE, HERALD, and BOBCAT were fun to write in. But, as @Rex wrote, the tech-speak and convoluted cluing took some of the shine off.
Star Wars, Harry Potter, gamers, textspeak, rappers, genders, Marvel trivia, ad nauseum … Where did you go Eugene Maleska?
I liked it. Cute theme, well-executed. Even though low on crunch and sparkle.
Medium-tough for me The tough part was figuring out how to make the theme answers work and what letters to use. It took a fair amount of post-solve staring before the trick sorta clicked. Not knowing that XS was a size (hi @Rex et.al.) didn’t help.
JAKOB and FARM were WOEs.
Costly erasures - futzing with the theme answers.
Clever idea but I agree with @Rex about the rest of it.
It doesn't work differently in the different instances if you view it correctly. Replace the M in Mobsters with an L. Replace the Ex in Ex-spouses with an S. Replace the L with Ales with XL. Replace the S in Aquarius with an M. No Down answers or rebuses involved.
Anon 10:37: You've got it backwards. You're taking the L out of ALES and sizing up to LX with AXLES.
And XS and S are absolutely standard women's sizes almost everywhere, although XS is not as common in menswear as it is in womens wear.
I solved the puzzle, understanding that we were working with clothing sizes, and when I finished I took time to study the themers and really understand the trick. (I don't always do that.) That made me appreciate the puzzle, even though it wasn't in my wheelhouse.
I do think some of the cluing was clunky. At first I strongly objected to the clue saying steaming is a sign of boiling, but I suppose we could be talking about a person who is "steamed," instead of a pot of hot water, in which case the clue may be okay!
so is putting bacon lettuce and pebbles in your mushy peanut butter n jelly
I, like others, solved it as a rebus. I understand that it is not a rebus puzzle now, but I still don't understand how the Axles/Ales clue works itself out. In the other 3 answers, you use one size going across and one size going down. What is the size hidden in Maximum? I would think to be consistent the down answer should have XL while the across has L, since the down answer has the larger size. Makes no sense to me.
[“Sizing up”, today, for the first time in crossword history]
THESE
@jnizbth 11:29 a.m. Replace the XS in ex-spouses with an S, not the EX. Very confusing.
Seemed plenty easy for a Thursday, particularly if you ignored the theme. I filled in every last square in the grid perfectly and still had no idea what the trick was supposed to be.
The revealer had me looking UP at the squares above the italicized clues for something that might “fit,” no pun intended. That would have worked for AQUARIUM/the S in SPEND and in LOBSTERS/the M in IMO. I even saw the “size” aspect at ESPOUSES where the M in STUMP is UP above the S, but it made no sense because that answer required an X. Anyway, I was surprised to see that it came down to clothing sizes. And enjoyable solve but a very frustrating theme for me.
Yep
I seriously thought 8A was gonna be POOPER. I even tried filling it in.
Anon 10:01. Loved that.
This was me. Darn blogger. 🤨
Oops...of course I meant sizing up to XL, not LX. (This time I got it backwards!)
I agree with you 100% on the puzzle but only 99.9% on your post. I’ve got nothing against orange but must respectfully abstain from the Go Broncos part. 😄 Big big big season opener coming up!
@Anonymous 11:17 AM
I think the answer to your question is: "To Hell."
Interestingly, the Internet Archives has a book of Maleska-era Saturday puzzles and I looked through the first few and they are a whole 'nuther level of suck. My Gunkometer subscription went up just looking through them. I am delighted those aren't around anymore.
https://archive.org/details/isbn_0804115842/isbn_0804115842
Jnlzbth. I'm sure I've STEAMed a few people but I've never boiled a living being (well, except for crabs). I think you may be "clutching at straws" here in a valiant attempt to say something positive about this puzzle. It was, as you said, clunky.
I like some trickery on Thursday, but this one had me stumped. Once I saw LOBSTERS clued as MOBSTERS, I thought: okay, we "size up" by one letter alphabetically: L -> M. But nope... I was baffled, even when I filled in the last square and got the Happy Pencil. Really? This mess is correct? I solved last evening and was too impatient to wait til the morning and get Rex to explain it, so I went to NYT's Wordplay page, which I don't often do. I can't say I was too impressed by the mangled logic.
At least the names weren't too bad. JAKOB, QUORA, and ROMAN were the only Unknowns. But I share Rex's annoyance at the excess of tech references.
I bungled my response above; I should have said, Replace the XS (not the EX) in Ex-spouses with an S.
I don't think the Down answers enter into the "trick" at all. I think they just have to work as crosses.
Amen! Glad you're back, Rex. I enjoyed you more than the puzzle!
Les - Ha ha, maybe I was clutching at straws...but you have to admit that a lot of people posting here seem to be almost BOILING MAD about this puzzle! ;-D
Yep, thanks. I corrected that way up above. A challenging puzzle to figure out AND to explain, I guess!
This was just a messy array of things I don’t care for. Too much techie stuff. Some is fine; we have to live with tech. Couldn’t you suppress the urge and clue OPT, FARM and SOFA some other way?
And on the non-tech side … SNOWED?? I live in a temperate area of Canada (just north of Seattle) and we expect about 7 to 10 days of snow a year. It’s not “especially” wintry unless, oops, you mean it doesn’t snow in summer. In which case the clue kinda works, if you ignore the fact that it does occasionally snow in the fall or the spring.
I don’t understand the ORANGE clue. Am I not “allowed” to wear orange on the red carpet or is it somehow just a bad idea in terms of colour contrast? Next time I’m invited to participate in a red carpet ceremony, I’ll be sure to wear an orange tux. I look forward to seeing the photos.
The theme was interesting, but I’m still trying to work out ESPOUSE.
Not my fave puzzle.
There's a funny YouTube of a non-native English speaker baffled by someone who poops at parties.
Thank you Dan at 11:48. The center clue/answer seems to be wrong. In every other case, the across works with both "sizes", the down with the larger size. If it was consistent for L/XL, the down should be MAXLIMUM. The X without the L doesn't work with the other theme answers.
Theme went over my head. Rex, thanks for the explanation (which was my original reason for coming here as a noob solver). I am aware of Quora but never used it, so the phrase "toilet etiquite" got my Google fingers working. And I found out I don't want to know more about quora as one of my top query suggestions was "How do you etiquettely use the toilet?" Wow, just Wow.
On 3/14 there is a pie stand in Dallas (Emporium Pies) that gives you a free slice of pie if you can recite pi to 20 digits.
Rex’s write-up was about one kajillion times more enjoyable than the puzzle. Never seen such tortured clueing.
yeah this was def a Wtf puzzle . no fun
Hi Gary. The sizes are increasing in each case. So XS (2 letters) is morphing into S (1 letter) in EXSPOUSES, whereas L (1 letter) is morphing into XL (2 letters) with ALES. So it's consistent, I think.
Did about half of my average Thursday time but I disliked the puzzle almost from the outset. The theme was clunky and the tech references were heavy handed. It lacked the “oh NOW I get it!!” or “oh those JERKS I see what you did there” moments of many Thursday crosswords that I love so much.
Figured out the gait, but wasn’t able to work through ESPOUSES.
Also severely hampered as I thought the spelling was BEZERK not BERZERK. And I now realize my spelling is correct and that with the extra R is not acceptable alternative.
Surprised by your generosity in giving 3 stars, Rex. BRRS is egregious, but as a tech industry professional forced to PROMPT Claude many many times a day, this puzzle doesn't pass Will Shortz's so-called "Breakfast Test" for me. Nauseating. I benefit from Claude, and I hate Claude. The crossword is supposed to be a respite from this existential nightmare. Ugh.
Can we please stop with NTH meaning "last"? Its common usage is different from its math usage, and the clue mentions math specifically. It just means "a generic term" in a sequence that might not even have a "last" term. So you could say, "We can express the n-th term in the sequence 2, 4, 6, 8... as 2n". This "n" is not an indicator of some kind of termination, it's basically a way to briefly state something like "the first term is 2, the second is 4, the third is 6, and so on".
Great puzzle, Killian. Lots of look-ups for me yet a ton of fun
I think Jnlzbth at 1:50 has it right and the down words don't enter into it. Read Wordplay and there's no mention of them. And Rex doesn't mention them either. People are complicating the twist.
I grew up on Apple, before it was cool, and I’ll just say I distinctly remember the removing of the headphone jack and the fact that they were saying “No but it’s cool ‘cause now we have another device for you to forget to charge every night or to accidentally leave on the charger, so that’s better!” (I never caved on that one—still use corded headphones that now plug into whatever ports I have). I guess the clue was pointing to the fact that it was the same movement. I was livid, and added it to my list of ways that Apple has been making my life worse since the death of Steve Jobs.
Getting to the puzzle late since I spent the morning at a pre-semester AI conference. Glad I could count on Rex to have already denounced LLMs and PROMPTS and the like before I even saw the puzzle. But I did enjoy piecing the theme together post-solve, and it felt like a proper THursday.
Dude, I come to this site from time to time when there is a particularly hard or annoying puzzle. Kudos for keeping this up for so many years. But, Rex, by God, how can you grade this puzzle “easy to medium” and then go onto explain in detail why it was anything but that? My thinking was just like yours. I saw lobsters and figured we were just going to be changing one letter in each of the themers. But it became clear that that wasn’t going to work on all of them. So, thank you for explaining that it was a size thing. I should’ve figured that out. It is very rare when I don’t. But you seem to have a tendency to say puzzles are easier than they were. I point this proclivity out to my crossword students often. Thanks for the intrepid work. It’s an amazing feat. But pls give us a break on your ratings. This puzzle was not easy to medium.
But I do agree with you with the AI/tech nonsense. Another aspect that brought the puzzle into a different category of difficulty or absurdity
Beat my previous Thursday best by over a minute and didn't even enjoy it that much due to how odious the tech fill was.
From a relative newbie at crosswords I thought the AI stuff was fun. I managed to solve this without understanding the theme. And I think we better get used to the AI stuff The machines are taking over the world and soon Claude will be crossword creator! 🤪
Same here
Well, half of the themers are flat out *wrong* unless a rebus is used that pairs the two adjacent sizes. I wasted a ton of time wondering what was wrong, all because of rebuses. Yes, I noticed the wrongs were still valid words. But they're still *wrong*.
Ummmm I couldn’t love your commentary on the AI-ness of this puzzle more. Just yuck. 🤮
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